2009 LA Calendar Motorcycle Show Weekend

Searching for shade in a sea of motorcycle bling and babes

Take one part custom artistry in iron, add in the heat of a sunny Southern California weekend, and top it off with a dozen hot chicks aching to be photographed by magazines and the contest-judging public, and you've got yourself a festival of music, motorcycles and beautiful women called the 2009 LA Calendar Motorcycle Show Weekend.

The LA Calendar Show is presented by Performance Machine and FastDates.com, and this year marks the 20th anniversary of its namesake Fast Dates “Mikuni Calendar.” The calendar, which premiered in 1989 with then-Playmate Pamela Anderson aboard Miguel Duhamel’s Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R750, has grown into an annual SoCal party of model searches, rock concerts and world-class custom bikes.

Flying in from all over the nation, the Calendar girls – as well as some of the hottest sportbikes, V-Twins and one-off customs – took over the Queen Mary Event Park in Long Beach last weekend. Even the TV-and-movie-famous Purrfect Angelz made a showing direct from Iraq where they entertained the troops with high kicks and shorter skirts.

Although a sagging economy kept some scheduled builders and performers away, if you could’ve peeled your eyes off the pink bikinis long enough to look around the park, you’d have found more than 100 vendors displaying their wares: parts, paint, riding gear and even a few motorcycles were for sale. Many booths this year even had sale racks and clearance bins – it seems even rock stars are getting laid off these days, even at the $25 per head entry fee ($35 for the full weekend). The admission price does include free entry to the Queen Mary as well, but the hot bikes and hot bodies aren’t in the water.

While the foot traffic was down from previous years, there was plenty of iron and lace to keep your eyeballs dazzled. Clear acrylic wheels, footpegs that convert into sidestands, 180-hp supercharged V-Rod-based superbikes, street trackers, low riders, and a laundry list of celebrity bike builders and designers including Kimura, Simms, Nagai, Guiffra and Silicato, to name just a few.

I missed the BMW S1000RR advertised on the show's flyer, but seeing the Roehr superbike helped check off speed machines on my event playlist. Draped across its seat was this year's Calendar model search winner to boot. Delicious and delicious! In another part of the field, you could satisfy your curiosity with BRP Spyder demo rides.

The LA Calendar show is possibly LA and Orange County’s best chance to see the magazine-grade custom bikes up close and in person. See the detail and passion Shinya Kimura puts into his celebrity rides. Or do damage to your corneas by getting too close to the chrome menagerie that is the first-place winner of the IronWorks Classic late Twin class, “Krome 3.”

Although we’ve got shots of the top builders and winners from the event, you’ll have to click on over to the event’s website for the final judging results. Fonzie’s pocket stenographer refuses work on weekends, mumbling something about Canadian holidays and homemade gin.

Jim Guiffra from AFT (Amador Fine Tune) Metric Customs brought a special Calendar Show custom Honda VTX named LowLa to this year's event. Decked out with a Leo Vince pipe, black-chrome wheels and case covers as well as a killer red and cream paint job, all built by select Powersports Modeling Agency girls. Combine stellar design with an all-female build team, and Jim took home 1st place in the metric custom division, taking a piece of the total $86,000 purse in PM (Performance Machine) parts.

The real party was aboard the Queen Mary on Saturday night. Builders and models partied down with the event attendees in the Observation Bar before moving the party into a limo and terrorizing the town. We didn’t attend this year’s party, but I heard it was even crazier than the last time we attended.

You shoulda been there, but now you gotta wait another year! Hopefully by then they’ll decide to move the dining tent from the side of the stage to the front so the audience can see the bands if they choose not to boil in the heat of the sun.

Be sure to check out our enormous photo gallery to see all the bikes, builders and babes from the 2009 LA Calendar Motorcycle Show Weekend.